From wgas@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov Mon Jul 12 10:45:25 1993 X-VM-VHeader: ("From:" "Sender:" "Resent-From" "To:" "Apparently-To:" "Cc:" "Subject:" "Date:" "Resent-Date:") nil X-VM-Bookmark: 3 Status: RO X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["3594" "Mon" "12" "July" "93" "10:34:03" "-0400" "Archie Warnock" "warnock@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov " nil "82" "NASA's Project STELAR announces a WWW server for public access" "^From:" nil nil "7"]) Return-Path: Received: from cv3.cv.nrao.edu by fits.cv.nrao.edu (4.1/DDN-DLB/1.5) id AA02109; Mon, 12 Jul 93 10:45:24 EDT Received: from Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov by cv3.cv.nrao.edu (4.1/DDN-DLB/1.13) id AA01424; Mon, 12 Jul 93 10:44:33 EDT Received: from localhost.gsfc.nasa.gov by Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov (911016.SGI/1.35) id AA02612; Mon, 12 Jul 93 10:34:03 -0400 Message-Id: <9307121431.AA02548@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov> Comment: AAS Working Group for Astronomical Software Originator: wgas@hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov Errors-To: leb@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov Reply-To: Version: 5.41 -- Copyright (c) 1991/92, Anastasios Kotsikonas From: warnock@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov (Archie Warnock) Sender: wgas@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: NASA's Project STELAR announces a WWW server for public access Date: Mon, 12 Jul 93 10:34:03 -0400 The Astrophysics Data Facility, part of NASA's National Space Science Data Center, and the STELAR Project announce the availability of a World Wide Web server, providing access to a number of on-line databases and services of interest to the astronomical community. The server is accessible to WWW clients like NCSA Mosaic (available from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu), Viola and the WWW LineMode browser (available from info.cern.ch). The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for the ADF/STELAR home document is http://hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov:80/STELAR_homepage.html Please report any problems and/or suggestions to me at warnock@hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov. I am also collecting WWW homepage documents with the intention of making them available through WAIS, as an experiment in combining the search functionality of WAIS with the display and hypertext capabilities of WWW and Mosaic. If you run a WWW server and would like your home page included in this database, just mail the HTML file to me. We continue to support WAIS sources of interest to the astronomical community. All are accessible through the NASA directory of servers. The source file for NASA-directory-of-servers is included below. My intention is to include any WAIS sources that might be of interest to the NASA and/or astronomical communities in the NASA-directory-of-servers. Please feel free to send additional sources to stelar-info@hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov Here are brief descriptions of all of the databases currently run from the ADF by the STELAR Project: AAS_jobs.src - AAS Job Register Listings AAS_meeting.src - Abstracts for the most current AAS meeting AAS_meeting_Summer92.src - Abstracts for June '92 AAS meeting AAS_meeting_Summer93.src - Abstracts for June '93 AAS meeting AAS_meeting_Winter93.src - Abstracts for January '93 AAS meeting abstracts.src - NASA RECON abstracts for 8 journals astropersons.src - Chris Benn's e-mail addresses ADC_documents.src - Astronomical Data Center on-line docs BGRASS-L.src - Archives of BGRASS-L list server NASA-directory-of-servers.src - source of sources for NASA community NASA_Missions.src - NASA mission payload information NSSDC_CD-ROM.src - Descriptions of CD-ROMs available from NSSDC SPACEWARN.src - NASA SPACEWARN bulletins WGAS.src - Archives of WGAS-L list server Here is the source file for the NASA-directory-of-servers. Extract between the dashed lines to the file NASA-directory-of-servers.src and put the file in your wais-sources directory: ------------------------ CUT HERE -------------------------------- (:source :version 3 :ip-name "ndadsb.gsfc.nasa.gov" :tcp-port 210 :database-name "NASA-directory-of-servers" :cost 0.00 :cost-unit :free :maintainer "stelar-info@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov" :description "Server created with WAIS release 8 b5.1 on May 5 14:05:34 1993 by warnock@Hypatia This database contains WAIS source files of interest to the NASA community. Some, but not all, are run by the STELAR project at the National Space Science Data Center. Others are here purely as a service to the astronomy, astrophysics, planetary and space physics communities. Direct queries about specific databases to the maintainers listed in the individual source files. " ) ------------------------ CUT HERE -------------------------------- _______________________________________________________________________ -- Archie Warnock Internet: warnock@hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov -- Hughes STX "Unix --- JCL For The 90s" -- NASA/GSFC Project STELAR: WAIS to do science From wgas@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov Tue Jul 13 10:10:33 1993 Status: RO X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["3348" "Tue" "13" "July" "93" "09:56:37" "-0400" "\"BARRY M. SCHLESINGER\"" "BSCHLESINGER@NSSDCA.GSFC.NASA.GOV" nil "76" "NOST FITS Definition approved as NOST Standard" "^From:" nil nil "7"]) Return-Path: Received: from cv3.cv.nrao.edu by fits.cv.nrao.edu (4.1/DDN-DLB/1.5) id AA04177; Tue, 13 Jul 93 10:10:32 EDT Received: from Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov by cv3.cv.nrao.edu (4.1/DDN-DLB/1.13) id AA00166; Tue, 13 Jul 93 10:09:29 EDT Received: from localhost.gsfc.nasa.gov by Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov (911016.SGI/1.35) id AA12799; Tue, 13 Jul 93 09:56:37 -0400 Message-Id: <930713100743.2261a8b4@NSSDCA.GSFC.NASA.GOV> Comment: AAS Working Group for Astronomical Software Originator: wgas@hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov Errors-To: leb@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov Reply-To: Version: 5.41 -- Copyright (c) 1991/92, Anastasios Kotsikonas From: "BARRY M. SCHLESINGER" Sender: wgas@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: NOST FITS Definition approved as NOST Standard Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 09:56:37 -0400 The NSSDC's NASA/Science Office of Standards and Technology (NOST) has completed development of a formal definition of the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) for the transfer of information, in support of the astronomical community. The standard was developed to provide a document that would remove contradictions and resolve ambiguities present in the four papers and Floating Point Agreement endorsed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as the basis for FITS, one that NASA projects and other researchers could use to design data sets in conformance to FITS. Working under NOST procedures, a FITS Technical Panel composed of astronomers and chaired by American Astronomical Society Working Group on Astronomical Software Chair R. J. Hanisch (STScI) developed a draft standard. In order to ensure that this standard accurately represented FITS as accepted by the astronomical community, there were three review cycles. In each cycle, the opportunity to review the standard was widely publicized throughout the astronomical community, with particular care taken to notify the international and regional FITS Committees. When the two-month review period was completed, the Panel reviewed the comments, revised the draft standard, and provided detailed replies to all reviewers explaining its action on each point. When the review process was complete, the Technical Panel proposed the standard to the NOST FITS Accreditation Panel for acceptance as a NOST standard. The Accreditation Panel, composed of the NOST executive board and an outside member from the astrophysics community, reviewed the process followed by the Technical Panel and their handling of reviewer comments. Approval of the NOST "Definition of the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS)" was unanimous and an outstanding effort by the Technical Panel was noted. This standard will now be submitted to the IAU FITS Working Group for endorsement as the international standard for FITS. Approval is believed likely. The NOST Standard, like the drafts before it, is available by anonymous ftp from nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov, or by DECnet copy from NSSDCA, in the directory FITS, in LaTeX, PostScript, and flat ASCII forms. Get the AAREADME.DOC file for details. (Note: as of this writing, the LaTeX and flat ASCII versions of the approved standard are available. The PostScript version is still in production. The proposed and adopted standards can be distinguished by the date; the final standard is dated June 18, 1993. The only change in content is that adopted standard contains the new name for the NOST.) Printed copies can be obtained from the NOST Librarian, who can be reached as follows: (Postal) NASA/Science Office of Standards and Technology Code 633.2 Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt MD 20771 USA (Internet) nost@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov (DECnet) NCF::NOST Telephone: +1-301-286-3575 8 a. m. - 5 p. m., U. S. Eastern Time If the Librarian is unavailable, a phone mail system takes the call after four rings. If you have additional questions, the FITS office can be reached by electronic mail at the address below. for Donald Sawyer, NOST Secretary Barry M. Schlesinger Coordinator, FITS Support Office Secretary, Technical Panel. +1-301-513-1634 fits@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov NCF::FITS From wgas@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov Wed Jul 28 17:00:35 1993 Status: RO X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] [nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil "^From:" nil nil nil]) Return-Path: Received: from cv3.cv.nrao.edu by fits.cv.nrao.edu (4.1/DDN-DLB/1.5) id AA17695; Wed, 28 Jul 93 17:00:33 EDT Received: from Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov by cv3.cv.nrao.edu (4.1/DDN-DLB/1.13) id AA05239; Wed, 28 Jul 93 16:59:34 EDT Received: from localhost.gsfc.nasa.gov by Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov (911016.SGI/1.35) id AA16847; Wed, 28 Jul 93 16:58:20 -0400 Message-Id: <9307282055.AA07171@SOL.STSCI.EDU> Comment: AAS Working Group for Astronomical Software Originator: wgas@hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov Errors-To: leb@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov Reply-To: Version: 5.41 -- Copyright (c) 1991/92, Anastasios Kotsikonas From: Bob Hanisch Sender: wgas@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: WGAS annual report Date: Wed, 28 Jul 93 16:58:20 -0400 \documentstyle[11pt]{article} \topmargin 0in \oddsidemargin 0.5in \evensidemargin 0.5in \headheight .125in \footheight .125in \textheight 8.9in \textwidth 6.0in \parindent 0in % Paragraph indentation amount \parskip 1ex % White space between paragraphs amount \nofiles \begin{document} \pagestyle{plain} \thispagestyle{empty} \begin{center} \large \bf Working Group on Astronomical Software \\ Annual Report \\ \normalsize \bf Submitted by R. J. Hanisch, Chair \\ 15 April 1993 \\ Revised, 23 June 1993 \\ \end{center} This report covers the period from June 1992 (after the Columbus AAS Meeting) through June 1993 (including the Berkeley meeting). WGAS members continued their participation in the NASA/Science Office of Standards and Technology FITS Technical Panel, whose charter was to codify the existing FITS standards in a manner acceptable as a formal NASA standard. The committee is chaired by R. J. Hanisch. All work on the proposed standard was completed in the winter of 1992 following a period of public review and comment. The standard has now been reviewed by NASA's accreditation panel and been approved for acceptance as a NASA standard. It is expected that the WGAS, European FITS Committee, and ultimately the IAU Commission 5 FITS Working Group will approve the NASA document as the official FITS standard, superceding the various FITS papers that have been published separately. At the winter 1993 (Phoenix) Council meeting, the WGAS FITS Committee was authorized to vote on extensions and modifications to the FITS standard on behalf of the Society. The WGAS FITS Committee has been constituted to include broad representation in the user community, with representatives from the major astronomical software groups, major observatories, and end-users. The membership of this committee is as follows: \begin{center} \begin{tabular}{|ll|} \hline Don Wells, NRAO (Chair) & dwells@nrao.edu \\ Lee Brotzman, NSSDC & brotzman@ndadsa.gsfc.nasa.gov \\ Dennis Crabtree, DAO/CADC & crabtree@dao.nrc.ca \\ Eric Greisen, NRAO & egreisen@nrao.edu \\ Bob Hanisch, ST ScI (ex officio) & hanisch@stsci.edu \\ Arne Henden, OSU & henden@mps.ohio-state.edu \\ Bob Kibrick, Lick Obs. & kibrick@lick.ucsc.edu \\ William Lupton, Keck Obs. & wlupton@keck.hawaii.edu \\ Eric Mandel, SAO & eric@cfa.harvard.edu \\ Bob Narron, IPAC & bob@ipac.caltech.edu \\ Bill Pence, HEASARC & pence@tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov \\ Jeff Percival, U.Wis. & jwp@sal.wisc.edu \\ Skip Schaller, U.Ariz. & skip@as.arizona.edu \\ Barry Schlesinger, NASA FITS Office & bschlesinger@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov \\ Peter Teuben, U. Md. & teuben@astro.umd.edu \\ Randy Thompson, IUE & rthompson@iue.gsfc.nasa.gov \\ Doug Tody, NOAO & tody@noao.edu \\ Michael Van Steenberg, NSSDC & mev@ndadsa.gsfc.nasa.gov \\ Archie Warnock, NSSDC & warnock@hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov \\ Winifred Williams, NSO & wwilliams@noao.edu \\ & \\ Preben Grosbol, ESO, IAU (non-voting) & pgrosbol@eso.org \\ \hline \end{tabular} \end{center} In April the WGAS FITS Committee had its first serious business to consider: voting on an agreement on blocking standards for media other than $\frac{1}{2}$-inch 9-track magnetic tape, and approval of two new FITS extensions -- binary tables ({\tt BINTABLE}) and images ({\tt IMAGE}). Don Wells, chair of the WGAS FITS Committee, announced a call for votes on these proposals on 7 April 1993. On 1 June 1993 Don announced the results: a unanimous vote, 20--0, in favor of all three proposals. The European FITS Committee had already approved these proposals, originally in April 1992 with a reaffirmation in April 1993. The Japanese FITS Committee, chaired by Shiro Nishimura, reported its approval of all three proposals on 19 June 1993. These proposals will now be considered by the IAU FITS Committee, hopefully in time for consideration by the IAU General Assembly in The Hague. A WAIS server for FITS documents has now been established on host fits.cv.nrao.edu [192.33.115.8] which allows users to search the FITS literature (standards documents, source code, test data sets, and the archive of the FITS mail exploder and sci.astro.fits newsgroup postings. These files may also be accessed directly with FTP (for example, look under fits/documents/standards for a copy of the NASA FITS Standard, and under fits/documents/proposals for the text of the three approved proposals mentioned above. Following on the success of the First Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) conference (Tucson, October 1991), a second ADASS conference was held in Boston in November 1992. Attendance was again well over 300, with over 100 papers presented. ADASS III will be held in Victoria, BC, in October 1993, and ADASS IV is currently be planned for Baltimore in late September 1994. A special interest group meeting on world coordinate systems in FITS was held during ADASS II. This meeting led to the development of a draft proposal for handling coordinates in FITS, compiled by Eric Greisen (NRAO) and Mark Calabretta (ATNF), which supercedes the draft prepared several years earlier by Hanisch and Wells. The document has been distributed by FTP and was discussed further at the Berkeley WGAS meeting. We hope to move forward with an agreement on a standard notation for standard sky projection geometries as quickly as possible. The Berkeley WGAS meeting consisted of a morning session with contributed papers and status reports and an afternoon business session dealing primarily with FITS issues. Barry Schlesinger gave a status report on the activities of the NASA FITS Support Office at GSFC. In addition to the work on the NASA FITS document, Barry's office is developing a FITS verification program and FITS User's Guide. Initial copies of both are available from the FITS Support Office (fits@nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov). Don Wells presented the annual FITS status report, and led the discussions regarding several new issues. A proposal has been put forward by Bill Pence and Arnold Rots that would allow string-valued keywords to extend over multiple card images. Several people expressed concern about this proposal, at the same time recognizing the occasional need for long text strings. Discussion is likely to continue at the January 1994 WGAS business meeting. \end{document}